What counts as a philosophical novel? What is it about philosophical novels that makes them philosophical? And what sort of work is involved in writing them? Is the job of the novelist at all like the job of the philosopher?

These are some of the questions I discuss with fiction writer Daniel Howard. He suggests strong parallels between the forces of antagonism that must be set up against the protagonist in a novel and the objections that a great philosopher must subject his thesis to in order to make a case for it. In the process, we discuss Plato's dialogues, Dostoevsky, Camus, Ayn Rand, Nietzsche, Hegel, Rorty, Shakespeare, Dante, John Fowles, and a number of other philosophers and fiction writers.

We end on relativism. Daniel defends relativism against its usual charges, then makes a case that relativist writers perhaps shouldn't be writing relativist novels.